


No One's Fearless

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canon - TV, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Injury, Married Couple, Relationship(s), Season/Series 04, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:56:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's dying out on her, but she shouldn't get this scared about losing just one life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One's Fearless

Blood stuck to her shirt, her skin. She could feel it streaked across her face and pushed so far beneath her fingernails that they might never come clean. But it wasn’t her blood, so why was her heart beating so fast?

 _Haven’t felt this alive in weeks_ , she’d said.

Hadn’t felt this scared to lose a life in about that long, too. Kara could hear Sam’s breathing jagged, and with his body limp in her arms it was the only thing telling her that he was still alive. That and the drip drip drip of blood, showing his heart still pumping, even as she tried to clot the flow.

Galactica’s halls weren’t smooth enough as she dragged him backwards, and she stumbled‚ but she needed the footholds. Adrenaline had made Sam light in her arms at the start, fire burning bright in her, leaving her to shout for them to all go, go. Her mission had changed, but theirs needn’t.

Adrenaline had then turned sluggish in her veins, and her muscles screamed but she kept pushing them. Her breathing became sharp, too deep, and it didn’t help that her throat was choked in on itself. Yet she pushed further.

There was no end to her strength as long as she still had a chance to save Sam. It wasn’t weak sentiment, despite the stinging tears filling her vision, it was a deep urge from somewhere in her past before she had left her first body on a nuclear wasteland of a world. From when safe and easy were her foundations for what was good for her. From when humanity was theirs and it was comfortable and happy. Before cold dead stupidity drove her to run away.

Irony struck now, how she should be dead and yet she was dragging a man who shouldn’t be able to die, and his life was depending on her power to move fast enough. Her hands slipped, sweat mixing with the blood. She lost her grip and fell down, muscles screaming and trembling with the break from their strain.

It sounded like a sob when she drew a deep breath, and her eyes stung. She tried to wipe them with the back of her hand but the blood was there too.

None of that mattered when she heard footsteps behind her. She wiped her eyes with a fierce pull of her hand, ignoring the red, and grappled for her gun.

“Show me your frakking hands!” shouted the marine.

Kara gritted her teeth and pulled the trigger on one of her own men. It didn’t fire. Her hand trembled, but she was not ready to die again. She hadn’t noticed the other man before he pulled a pen. Suddenly he did the job of a bullet for her, and with as much force as she could have asked for.

She let the gun fall and her hands found Sam again, still warm, still alive. His breathing was getting shallower, though, and she was losing time. Behind her, the man with the pen had won and knelt over the marine.

“You have to help me get him to Cottle,” she rasped, and gambled a bit of strength on this because she was starting to feel that it was a losing gamble any other way.

“No, no.” The man turned towards her. “Just on the way here, me and my pen pal were shot at two times, once by his own men.”

“He’s gonna die.” Kara feared the words.

“Sorry.” The man had a desperate light in his eyes as he turned away.

Kara’s lids flickered shut for a brief second. She didn’t see the point of 30,000 people still being alive if, in the end, she would have to stand alone to get anything done. She held onto Sam again, and there was a muscle spasm; it wasn’t over yet, he was still alive.

“Oh—” She took in deep breaths as she pushed off against a groove in the floor, and her muscles groaned. “Okay,” she said, to keep herself focused as well as some vain attempt to let him know.

“Frak!” she heard the man say.

She hoped he had been killed for the second before his awkward steps led him back to her side.

“Don’t ask me what I’m doing, because I have no frakking idea,” he said under his voice and stuffed a gun in his belt the wrong way. “Come on, let’s get him moving faster.”

The adrenaline came back to Kara in a jolt. She stopped her arms from shaking and tried to keep Sam from flopping as she adjusted his weight; a slight moan escaped his lips, eyes rolled back into his head.

“Why does he not have something to stop that bleeding?” the man demanded, testy and desperate in the same voice.

“The wound’s on his neck,” Kara gritted out. “Tourniquet’s out of the question, and I needed my hands.”

“Get him up, get him up,” Romo said, putting an arm under Sam’s and lifting him off of Kara.

Her hands were quick to grab the loose fabric, press it tightly where the blood still dripped, hold it steady. Sam’s head was falling forward, she caught it, both hands occupied now as the man groaned as he stood to his feet. “Who are you?” She was suddenly suspicious

“Romo Lampkin.” He gritted his teeth.

Sam’s free arm collapsed over Kara’s shoulder and she could bear some of the dead weight, even holding the compress in place. “No, _who_ are you?” Kara asked further as they started making a few steps.

“Attorney at law.”

The words hit her like something outside of reality, outside the desperation that had filled her little world. She felt out of place, and distracted for a moment—she rolled her eyes. Of course it would be a frakking lawyer. “Why the hell were you in custody?”

“Because after being attorney to both Gaius Baltar and William Adama, my reputation is up in the air.” Romo tinkered with dry snark of his own, she noticed.

Kara could hardly believe her ears, but she was moving, and the more she talked the faster they went. “You teach penmanship in your spare time?”

“Normally I’d be all ears for that kind of humor,” Romo said, voice strained, “but carrying solid muscle does not help the temper. What did you feed him?”

Kara’s bitterness transformed to a temper before it got out of her mouth, and her feet dug in for a halt. “You know, never mind, I can make the rest of the way on my own.”

“Don’t be an idiot, sweetheart,” Romo said.

Kara glared at him. “If I had a gun—”

“You would not shoot me,” Romo answered and stared straight back at her. “Does anything I say or do make him worse?” He nodded towards Sam, but didn’t wait for her answer. “No. And killing me doesn’t make him better. So, gun or not, you care too much to do anything but buck up like the warrior that you are.”

Kara couldn’t even argue semantics on that. “Move faster,” she ordered, and felt a lump coming to her throat again. It was too difficult to stay angry, no matter how this Romo was helping.

Her eyes burned, not with tears, but with the blood she’d wiped into them in her haste. It just made the scene that much more of a disaster. She was stumbling down Galactica’s halls in the midst of civil war, Sam nearly dead, her only aid a lawyer with words that bit deeper than they should.

With the weight bearing mostly on him, he wasn’t done. “Don’t you have any friends to help you?”

“They’re busy.” Kara cleared her throat after the clipped words and blinked hard.

“Must not have many.” Romo seemed to be going all out with that eyebrow raise.

Again he was right, and she could resent him for it. “I should be hanging with undead company, that’s the problem.”

“Ah,” Romo acknowledged slowly, moving the next few steps in silence. And the mutiny must all be somewhere else, given the clear path to the infirmary. They still weren’t close enough for her to hear medical noise. Then Romo spoke again, “Saw your picture’s off the wall, though.”

Kara’s irritation came back for the way that he just didn’t belong. “Why should you care?”

“Well, I had a fancy for the picture when young Mr. Adama couldn’t let it go,” Romo said. “Lot of emotion in that bit of paper; worth a lot.”

Well of course, Kara thought bitterly. They’d all been distressed, back when it was just a normal death. Lee might tell her it didn’t matter now, but how long would that last?

“Shut up and keep moving,” she said under her breath, and a murmur of noise from just off told her that the infirmary was close.

“Haven’t said anything in a while,” Romo answered. “Maybe it’s your own head that’s making the noise?”

Kara shook her head to clear it, eyes still watery and stinging. She didn’t have words. She couldn’t hear Sam’s breathing, could barely feel his pulse beneath the cloth that she still held firmly against his neck.

“Good gods!” Cottle snorted on seeing them approach and walked out with firm steps. “What’s going on here.”

“Sam’s got a bullet in the neck,” Kara said.

“Ishay, cart!” Cottle ordered. “What else?” He looked at the bloody pair as they still held up Sam.

“Just Sam,” Kara said wearily, as Romo lost strength and she was supporting more of Sam’s weight again. Her body protested, all its adrenaline spent for the moment.

“Well, and a marine who won’t need any aid.” Romo indicated his own hands.

Ishay rolled up a cart, and Cottle helped Romo lower Sam down, supporting his neck along the way. He crumpled silently and didn’t even twitch, not even when Kara looked to Ishay to take charge of holding the compress to the wound on his neck. Ishay moved in quickly, and Kara almost stumbled a step out of the way, hand clenching.

“We’ve got this now,” Cottle said, looking to her. “Get out of those clothes and clean up, especially your face.”

Kara felt her heart throbbing painfully as they rolled Sam off. She sunk to a stool, grimacing, trying to be angry again because anger was...good. But Cottle was right, she couldn’t stay in these clothes. The smell of Sam’s blood sent her stomach rolling, and she had to get it off.

“Better get to safe quarters,” Romo muttered. His sharp eyes met Kara for the moment it took him to pull sunglasses from his pocket.

Politeness called for thanks but she didn’t trust her voice.

His eyebrows darted up, then lowered again, and he put the glasses on. With a weary toss of his finger in her direction, he disappeared down a hall.

Kara was on autopilot as she found new tanks, found a head, scrubbed herself down with hands that she forced not to shake. Her mind protested finding even that much strength after running off an adrenaline high, that was why she felt like this. What she needed to do was shake it so that she could be irritated at Sam for getting shot, for reminding her of something she’d forgotten.

But her lip quivered as she rubbed her hands nearly raw with the empty-scented soap, trying to get his blood off of them, trying to forget the bullet in his _head_. She closed her eyes tightly, holding back the tears, leaning over the sink and keeping her jaw tight. Gods frak it all, and what about the rest of the mutiny? What about Adama?

It was all over. She only needed one random person to tell her that, and another to tell her that everyone made it through. Everyone but Sam, her head told her coldly, and fear gripped her again as she went back to the infirmary.

“What’s going on?” she asked Cottle, brow tight and arms hugging herself.

“He needs to go into surgery, but he’s not gone yet,” Cottle gave her a straight look.

Kara just nodded, closing her eyes tightly for a second. “I need to be there.”

Cottle didn’t say otherwise in his low rumbling voice. “Get ready, then.”

It hit her like a nightmare when Sam woke mid-surgery and spouted words she didn’t understand, not even seeing that she was there. Somehow her mind was spiraling down into a pool of sick worry, as if her heart was in danger of breaking. Because of Sam—how could it be because of Sam?

Surgery went well enough, and brought him out of danger. Kara could barely stand on her feet, and even with Sam lying shaved and IV’d, a breathing mask over his face, her heart still felt like it was in the fist of death. She rested her hand on his arm, feeling the warmth that told her he was still alive and not just a machine to her.

She should have taken the time to gather her thoughts, but she didn’t even notice that she was falling forward, exhausted head resting on the blankets of his bed. Everywhere ached, but she slept by his side.


End file.
